Good karma at Central Canada Comic Con

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This article was published 01/11/2014 (4234 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It’s a good thing Ohio artists Nigel Sade and his partner Sarah Wilkinson came back to the annual Central Canada Comic Con (C4) at the RBC Convention Centre.

On a return visit to C4 — Sade’s seventh and Wilkinson’s third — the couple got a hefty helping of Canadian hospitality and an unexpected demonstration of honesty.

Sade and Wilkinson, with separate booths for their unique artwork set up among numerous artists and exhibitors, were stunned when a C4 guest approached Sade and handed him $40.

“The guy tells me, ‘This is the money I owe you from last year,’ and I had to get him to remind me which piece it was because I had forgotten,” said Sade, dressed as pirate because everyone in his extended family, which has the last name Rogers, has a link to some sort of Jolly Roger pirate theme.

Sade said he “went out on a limb” and let a customer last year take a piece of Legend of Zelda art he had done because of he could tell the man had fallen in love with the piece. Only problem was, the man was short on cash.

“He said he’d be back with the money. He didn’t make it back that weekend because something happened, I guess, but on Friday night, which was a full year later, he came back,” Sade said.

He said it’s a standing joke in the art world that in the U.S. when people say they’ll be back, it’s just an exit strategy.

“We call them the “be-backs,” you can hear their little wings; they’re never going to be back,” said Sade, who travels with his art for shows in North America and Europe. “In Canada, everybody who said they’d be back, they actually came back to my table. This guy came back with money.”

Sade’s art, described on his website as “exploring questions of Reality, Love, Thought and plain old strangeness,” has gained a following for its clever social commentary within its haunting images.

Visitors to C4 were treated to a jaw-dropping array of incredible costumes from Star Wars to Star Trek, superheroes and villains to grim reaper and numerous others bringing that creepy-but-incredible factor.

There’s still more to come Sunday during the last of the three-day event.

At 3 p.m., the River City Jedi is set to demonstrate “epic light saber battles” while athletes from Canadian Wrestling’s Elite will stage battles. Wrestling fans can get autographs from former two-time WWE Women’s Champion Victoria along with WWE Legends and Hall Of Fame Inductees Jake The Snake Roberts and Tito Santana.

Among the celebrity appearances through the weekend were actors from The Hobbit movies who play “Middle Earth’s Greatest Warriors”: William Kircher (Bifur), Graham McTavish (Dwalin), Peter Hambleton (Gloin), Dean O’Gorman (Fili) and Adam Brown (Ori) as well as Adrian Paul of Highlander. 

The C4 Comic Con, which runs 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Sunday, is expected to out-draw last year’s 44,000 attendees. The event was held in the Convention Centre.